Blog posts

See any blog bugs?

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

We just moved the blog to a new host. Please post a comment if you see anything broken.

Disclosure

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

The F.T.C. said that beginning on Dec. 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products… [NYT]
I’d like to disclose right now that my SelloutRank is disappointingly low. I sometimes receive review copies of books and albums (thank you) and get into advance screenings [...]

We’ve added free classifieds

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

We’ve added free classifieds at: ultrabrown.com/classifieds
You can buy and sell stuff, post or find housing, jobs, gigs, volunteering and so on.
Ever since the halcyon days of desi blogging, we’ve joked about putting together a personals site called Sepia Destiny. Yes we can. We decided against a casual encounters section for now — surely that’s what [...]

Books atwitter

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

For those of you more into books than any other strand of this site, I’ve just started blogging literature at vij.com …

… and microblogging books at twitter.com/manish_vij. Will not be restricting myself to South Asian lit. Do follow me there for book-specific and longer-form writing posted ~weekly.
The desi bits will be crossposted here, and Ultrabrown [...]

Meanwhile, on the left coast…

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

A gay and lesbian desi org apparently had no problem procuring a booth for the India Day festival in Fremont, CA. I always thought the metropolis of Stonewall would be more cosmopolitan than the city of sari shops.

New on the bookshelves

Friday, August 14th, 2009

Nicholas Schmidle, To Live or to Perish Forever: kicked out of Pakistan by Musharraf, which is its own kind of recommendation, Schmidle strikes back with an analysis of fundamentalism.
Sadanand Dhume, My Friend the Fanatic: travels through Indonesia with an Islamist (sensing a theme here).
Anne Cherian, A Good Indian Wife: pop fic, sari cover.
Pompousness [...]

Gays not welcome at India Day NYC

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Predictable discriminatory lameness from the FIA. Open your minds, bristly-moustached uncles. There will be a protest Sunday — how is that better than including card-carrying desis in the parade?
By the way, posting here may be slow til Wednesday. On the road for an arts and wedding weekend.
(thanks, Filmiholic)

Lychee-tini reminder

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Reminder: New York readers, come by the joint Ultrabrown + Sepia Mutiny meetup this Sunday at 5pm, Verlaine in LES, Manhattan. Good conversation, comfy leather couches, $5 martinis.
In the past the joint meetups have drawn around 50-70 people (albeit on a Saturday) with follow-on events around the corner. This time I’ve got my eye on [...]

Tokin’ meetup

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

As several of us will be in town for a wedding-shedding, come enjoy a joint Ultrabrown + Sepia Mutiny meetup Aug. 16. We’ll hold it at our usual spot, Verlaine in Lower East Side, the place with $5 lychee martinis and a comfy sitting area. From 5pm on. Mark your gCalendars!
Joint meetup, Sun Aug. 16, [...]

News feed moved

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

The news column’s RSS feed has moved to this address:
http://www.ultrabrown.com/feed/news
Please update your newsreaders. The posts feed remains unchanged.
Thanks, PK, for the reminder.
Related post: Waste even more time at work

Quick tag lookups

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Ultrabrown now has friendly tags for those of you addicted to your keyboards. For example:
ultrabrown.com/tag/australia for the ongoing race clashes. This one is a huge time saver when you’re trying to find that news post you vaguely remember. Tags with spaces work fine, e.g.: ultrabrown.com/tags/aravind adiga
ultrabrown.com/user/khoof for pearls of offbeat wisdom.
ultrabrown.com/news/19784 for the latest news [...]

Gettin’ Iggy wid it

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

When MTV Desi, Chi and K closed down, they were relaunched in a much more modest form as MTV Iggy, which focuses on diasporas, beginning with those from South and East Asia.
My good friend Samantha is the new Webmistress over there and invited us to guest blog for a month. The first Ultrabrown post just [...]

Who do you love?

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

Come on take a little walk with me babyTell me, who do you love?
-George Thorogood and the Destroyers

Robert Louis Stevenson — maybe it was the ’stache

I’m looking to add a couple more bloggers to Ultrabrown. Please nominate some in-duh-widuals whose blogging you whole-heartedly love.

· · · · ·
Here’s the backstory. I originally began blogging [...]

The iPhone ate my post

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

A couple of weeks ago we upgraded the blog to allow posting via mobile phone. That experiment ended in sadness and unicorn tears.
First, the WordPress iPhone app has a nasty bug where after you pour your heart into a post for an hour, which on the iPhone’s runty virtual ‘keyboard’ translates into approximately 20 characters, [...]